Agile User Centered Design: Enter
the Design Studio – A Case Study


Abstract
In this paper we describe the merger of user centered
design into agile (team) development practice as
manifest in a one day design studio. Benefits and
challenges to a design studio approach are discussed,
and the evolution of one design using the design studio
process is presented.
ACM Classification Keywords
H.5 Information interfaces and presentation (e.g., HCI)
H.5.2 User Interfaces (D.2.2, H.1.2, I.3.6)
K.6.3 Software Management – Software process

General terms
Design

Keywords
User centered design, agile, Scrum, design studio, agile
teams, software development
Introduction
The design studio [1,3] is an activity that fits well with
Agile software development practices and User
Centered Design (UCD). This case study documents the
concept of a studio approach to interaction design but
in the context of practicing agile UCD. It has been our
experience that the design studio helps agile and UCD
Copyright is held by the author/owner(s).
CHI 2008, April 5–10, 2008, Florence, Italy.
ACM 978-1-60558-012-8/08/04.
James M Ungar
User Interface Engineer
Jewelry Television
10001 Kingston Pike
Knoxville, TN 37922 USA
jim.ungar@jtv.com

Jeffrey A White
User Interface Engineer
Jewelry Television
10001 Kingston Pike
Knoxville, TN 37922 USA
jeff.white@jtv.com


CHI 2008 Proceedings · Case Studies April 5-10, 2008 · Florence, Italy
2167

coexist, making both stronger and more effective. Our
ideas are largely based on the experience of our user
experience (Ux) team in supporting six Scrum teams
over the course of one year.
Limitations
The observations reported here are limited to the
experiences of the user experience (Ux) team within
the development environment of a single company. The
phenomenon observed may not extend across all
company cultures.
Additional factors which may influence outcomes are
the presence of a strong collaborative environment at
the design studio site and the close proximity and
relative availability of end users to the Ux team. These
factors combine to enable the Ux team to conduct UCD
activities rapidly.
The design studios we conducted were done in the
context of building new products from the ground up. It
is unclear whether or not the design studio approach
would be a viable practice for making smaller
enhancements to mature products.
What is agile UCD?
Agile UCD is the practice of User Centered Design as
conducted within the wrapper of an agile software
development methodology. References to agile in this
article more specifically refer to Scrum [5]. Some
notable features of Scrum are:
? Time-boxed development cycles, called ‘sprints’
? Team planning and team ownership of the design
? Role sharing
? The goal to deliver production ready software at
the conclusion of every sprint

Scrum teams choose work for each sprint from a
prioritized list of features called a backlog. User
research influences this prioritization by making end
user needs known to the business stakeholders and the
team. The backlog is constantly refined and
reprioritized as new information becomes known, and
teams generally choose to work with items that are
fairly well defined and have a high priority.
With the duration of a typical sprint at less than 30
days, UCD practitioners may find a traditional design up
front approach difficult, and the implication of shared
design control a hindrance. We have found that the
design studio can help mitigate both concerns, and in
doing so bridge the gap between agile and UCD
methodologies.
Both UCD and Scrum share a desire to foster
understanding to the whole team, avoid feature creep,
and build only what is understood and of highest value
to the business and the end user. These shared
attributes are facilitated by the design studio, making
the practice a good fit for both approaches. As the
name implies, agile methods are geared to the
dynamically changing needs of the business. The user
centered designer working within agile needs to adapt
quickly as perceived business value changes.
Agile UCD, then, is the art and science of keeping the
research information flowing to the team in a manner
consistent with the design direction and the speed of
development.

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